About us
WHAT WE DO
Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI) is a unique place. An exciting research forum housed in a beautiful cinema, BIMI pursues an imaginative public engagement agenda that combines original and ambitious film curating with top-quality academic research and creative interaction with the artistic and cultural community of London, UK and beyond.
We programme about 70 events per year, spread over three terms from October to July. These include screenings, discussions, conferences, study days, lectures, book launches and performances, plus our annual international Essay Film Festival (in collaboration with Institute of Contemporary Arts), which has already become a key reference in the film festival circuit.
All of our activities take place in the Birkbeck Cinema, Gordon Square, which features 16mm and twin 35mm projectors in addition to high-quality digital projection. The variety of formats and the quality of our facilities make BIMI an ideal location for research-led events focusing on the presentation of film, television and video materials from across the artistic and cultural spectrum, and drawing on the full historical range of moving image culture (including archival prints and even magic lantern shows).
We think of our cinema as a laboratory for ideas, debate and experimentation, embodied by the projection of images and sounds that can move us, surprise us, and inspire us to thought and action.
Our programme is built principally around key thematic strands, all of which involve collaboration with colleagues from across Birkbeck and beyond.
Some of these strands are termly: Guilt Group, Digital Animation, Cinephiles, LUX Artists Moving Image, Sci/Film, Urban Change, Fruitvale Film Club, Children’s Film Club. Others are annual, such as the Pittsburgh Lecture, Human Rights Cinema, and the AL Rees Lecture.
We also regularly programme Essay Film special events and preludes, in preparation for our annual Essay Film Festival.
In addition to these thematic strands, we organise many one-off events in response to proposals received from colleagues at Birkbeck and from the wider research community, as well as from cultural institutions and other creative partners.
WHO WE ARE
BIMI is one of three Birkbeck Institutes, along with Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities (BIH) and Birkbeck Institute for Social Research (BISR). It was created in 2012, and began its programming activities in January 2013. Its founding Director was Laura Mulvey, who was succeeded by Michael Temple in September 2015. Since 2016 BIMI has been managed by Matthew Barrington.
BIMI is funded by the Schools of Arts, Law, and SSHP (Social Sciences, History and Philosophy), and by the Department of Psychological Sciences. We are also supported by the University of Pittsburgh, with whom we have a close collaborative relationship. Our Steering Group is made up of representatives from the contributing schools and departments across Birkbeck, as well as postgraduate student representatives, and our programme reflects the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of BIMI's supporters.
OUR PARTNERS
BIMI is essentially collaborative in nature, and the principal reason why we are able to punch way beyond our weight as a programming venue and research institute is because we work with a wide range of partners, at home and abroad, who help us intellectually, creatively and materially to realise our numerous and diverse projects.
With our colleagues from the University of Pittsburgh, we organise the annual Pittsburgh Lecture and a biennial BIMI-Pitt Research Workshop, and we send and receive postgraduate students and occasional faculty visitors.
Within Birkbeck, we collaborate with various research centres and institutes on an event-by-event basis: Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and Birkbeck Institute for Social Research; Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism; Birkbeck Gender and Sexuality; Birkbeck Interdisciplinary Research in Media and Culture; Birkbeck Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies; Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre; Raphael Samuel History Centre; and others.
Beyond Birkbeck, we regularly collaborate with other UK universities, for example, University of Roehampton, University of Sussex, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, University of Reading, University of the Arts London, University of Westminster, and others.
Just as significantly, we work with many non-university partners in the cultural sector: for example, the ICA, with whom we organise the Essay Film Festival. We co-curate a regular strand of experimental film events with LUX Artists’ Moving Image, and we work closely with important film archives in the UK, Europe, North America, South East Asia, and Latin America, as well as with several film festivals, such as London Film Festival, Korean Film Festival, Nordic Film Festival, Irish Film Festival London, and various national cultural institutes, such as the Goethe-Institute, French Institute, Finnish Institute, Austrian Cultural Forum, Camões Institute, and others.
OUR AUDIENCE
Our events are open to everyone, and almost all of them are free.
As our programme addresses a variety of social, political and cultural issues related to academic research, we attract a broad range of people to our events, including academics, students, artists, curators, independent researchers, activists, and the general public.
While we have a core audience of people interested in film and the moving image generally, and curious to see a variety of rarely screened films and other works, our public tends to change from event to event based on the topic. In some cases, the content of an event may attract a specific community, as occurred with events about pre-revolutionary popular Iranian cinema, the Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop, the Brazilian works of Vivian Ostrowsky, and the essays films of Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab. In other cases, we may draw a crowd that is specifically interested in a political or social theme or an area of cultural practice, such as the Digital Animation strand, the Fruitvale Film Club, or our events around Urban Change.
CONTACT US
BIMI is located within the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD (Google Maps).
Find out more via our social channels: BIMI Facebook, BIMI Twitter and BIMI Instagram.